South Africa’s truth commission on Monday began its first major hearing into the African National Congress guerilla campaign against apartheid, starting with testimony on a spate of bombings. Ten cadres from the ANC’s military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) are seeking amnesty from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in exchange for acknowledging responsibility for bombings that took place from 1980 to 1988. At...

The African National Congress’s new leader, Thabo Mbeki, has spoken of what he calls an African Renaissance that is now sweeping the continent. Although that media-friendly moniker may obscure more than it reveals, it is true that many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are struggling to be re-born and rejuvenated after centuries of colonial conquest and rule.

President Clinton recently announced that he will visit South Africa in March. President Mandela, meanwhile, has postponed a visit to Russia and is reportedly recuperating from exhaustion after a trip to Uganda.

In his final speech as head of the ruling Africa National Congress this week, President Nelson Mandela of South Africa warned the world of an effort by former apartheid rulers to intensify a destabilization campaign against South Africa’s new democracy. In the four hour speech delivered before 3,000 delegates at the ANCUs 50th national conference in the northwestern town of Mafikeng, Mandela also accused elements of the white minority of...

The last apartheid leader of South Africa, former President F.W. de Klerk, resigned yesterday as head of the National Party, effectively ending his role in South African politics. De Klerk led his pro-apartheid party, and most whites in South Africa, into a rapprochement with Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress and, ultimately, a one person, one vote political system. He shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela.

Michael Lapsley, a white Anglican priest, was letter-bombed by the White South African government of F.W. de Klerk. He joins Amy to discuss the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa and his role in the freedom struggle. He arrived in South Africa from his home of New Zealand as a pacifist but, witnessing the gross abuse of power and force by the apartheid regime, changed his feelings. He supported the movement to resist against the white...

A new film about South African President Nelson Mandela will open across the country later this month. Mandela the film chronicles the life of the former political prisoner turned president. Directed by South African filmmakers Joe Menell and Angus Gibson, the film is the only official biography of Nelson Mandela. And as a result, the filmmakers had unprecedented access to Mandela and to a 100 hours of extraordinary archival footage.

The South African Truth Commission marks its one year anniversary embroiled in controversy. The latest uproar involves the murderers of Steve Biko, a leading anti-apartheid activist in the 1970s and the head of the Black Consciousness Movement. Five former policeman have confessed to killing Biko in 1977 during an interrogation in a Port Elizabeth police station. But, as part of a deal with the Truth Commission, the five will likely receive...

The South African Truth Commission hits its one year, half-way point this month. Not unexpectedly, the Commission has sparked a lot of controversy in South Africa, particularly over the practice of granting amnesty to the confessed killers and torturers of the apartheid regime.